You load My Gratitude Buddy up with a list of short messages/prompts to yourself that make you reflect, feel good, or help get you back into flow, and My Gratitude Buddy will randomly send you those messages throughout the day.

How Does This Support Me In Being The Highest And Best Version Of Myself?

Gratitude is directly related to a sense of well being. Learning to check in with ourselves is another step towards emotional wholeness.

This tool supports you in connecting daily with yourself, helping you to cultivate mindfulness, optimism & focus so you can AMPLIFY the impact you know you're meant to create!

Often we forget how fortunate we are. We forget to acknowledge that there's ALWAYS something to be grateful for. Having a text that encourages you, keeps you on track, or gently reminds you of the bigger picture is a great tool to help you reflect & reset!

Reminding ourselves of those things gives our brains a little happy boost. And gets us thinking pleasant thoughts about ourselves.

Patterns of thought are just habits. If you keep prompting your brain to think pleasant thoughts about yourself, eventually, positive thinking will become a habit.

Are There Any Messages I Shouldn't Use?

Try to avoid using the words "no", "not", "...n't", "but", or anything else where it feels like you are pushing something away from yourself, instead of pulling something toward you.

Instead of saying what you don't want, find a positive way to say what you do want.

Instead of "I am not stuck", use "I feel inspired".

Often it helps to think of a picture of your message. It's hard to picture the absence of something, so this helps you think about what you would want to fill that void with.

If you have a concept that you want to create a message for, and you are having difficulty figuring out how to say it, email me at contact@mygratitudebuddy.com. I'm more than happy to help, and it's great practice for my own thought patterns to take a negative statement and turn it into a positive one.

Why "Short" Messages?

It needs to be read and felt at a glance.

Otherwise, you won't want to spare the time to read it, and the texts/emails will become annoying instead of inspiring.

I envision that most people will read these emails on their phone, so it should be easy to glance and see what the message is. Feel the warm fuzzies wash over you. Then go back to what you were doing with a nice happy-buzz. Serotonin rising!

Another reason for short is that our memory and attention is best for the first and last parts of something. So if the message is short, it gets more attention and a higher priority in memory.

What do you mean by "randomly...throughout the day"?

Each hour between 6am CST and 9pm CST, My Gratitude Buddy will pick a random number between 1 and 10.

If that number is 9 or 10, then it sends you an email with one of your messages.

The messages will be in random order, but it will cycle through them all before repeating.

It will also wait at least 4 hours between messages, so at most you would get 4 emails per day, and at least 0.

4 Emails Per Day?! I'm Already On Email Overload!

Exactly. That's why the messages should be kept really short.

These should be little bursts of happiness nestled into the flood of your other texts or emails.

Can I get Text Messages To My Phone Instead Of Emails?

Yes.

After you sign up, there will be an option to enter an SMS Email.

Enter your SMS email address and the randomly sent messages will go to your phone and not your email.

Clicking "Send Test" will send a message to both your email and your phone.

Your SMS email is a special email address that your phone company setup for you.

It's usually something like...

[your-phone-number]@[your-phone-company] For example, if you are sending an email to a Verizon mobile device, you would send it to the mobile number @vtext.com If the mobile phone number was 123-456-7890, you would send the email to 1234567890@vtext.com

Okay, I'll Bite, Why Random? Why Not Just Send A Specific Number On A Specific Schedule?

First, our brains pay more attention to random things. Once the brain finds a pattern, it starts to ignore the input.

Second, we value something random more than something expected. If we expect something, then when we get it, we feel okay...but not good...more like relief. If we get something randomly, then it actually does give us a bump of pleasure above "okay"...it's a nice surprise.

What's the "Let Friends Add Messages" link in the emails?

If you want to allow someone else to add messages to your list, you can send them the Add Messages link.

It's a different link from your regular Edit link. The Add Messages link only lets them add messages. They can't edit or delete messages that are already in your list. They can't even see the messages that are already in your list.

You could post the Add Messages link to Twitter, Facebook, or your Blog, and let everyone put anonymous messages in your list.

Or you could email it just to those trusted friends and loved ones who you know would add only inspiring messages to your list.

Or you can keep the messages in your list limited to just the messages you put in it, and not share the Add Messages link with anyone.

Is My Gratitude Buddy Secure?

Uh...no. Don't use this to randomly remind yourself of passwords, or where you hid your "escape the country stash of gold".

The "password" for your account is the long funny number after "edit=" in the Edit url. So if you send someone your Edit url, they're going to be able to see your messages to yourself.